


all i've got to guide me home

by citadelofswords



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Soon To Be Jossed, Speculation, a couple of quick mentions of child abuse, a quick mention of hera at the end, complete fabrication of the legal system, koudelka is a total badass, very little actual dialogue, written before episode 40
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 02:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7871266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne Eiffel was seven years, four months, two weeks, and three days old when her father went to prison. She wasn’t there— she was in physical therapy.</p><p>(or, Anne grows up.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	all i've got to guide me home

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, wow, I haven't written in the style of the Pushing Daisies narrator in years. Also I totally fucked around in terms of time, who even knows how right any of this is. I did the math where it was necessary, but I just threw some ages in certain places and they kind of stuck? what is time. what is the wolf 359 universe. who knows.
> 
> Anyway, this is specfic. title from Dark On Me by Starset (I was going to use another lyric from their song Telescope which fits Anne and Doug to a T but I got too sad listening to it and thinking of them so) also I do not own these characters and if I did you can bet they'd be happier than they are in canon, ok.

The facts were these:

Anne Eiffel was seven years, four months, two weeks, and three days old when her father went to prison. She wasn’t there— she was in physical therapy. When she came home, her papa looked grim, and told her she wouldn’t be seeing her dad for a while. Anne, who was still a little terrified of cars and driving in them, and who still had trouble breathing and walked kind of funny, wasn’t too upset. He’d be back soon, and by then he’d be _better_ and they’d go see movies and make cake together just like they always had. She wouldn’t be scared anymore. She’d be all grown up by then.

Three years, six months, and five days later, Anne still walked funny and still had trouble breathing and one day her papa didn’t come home from work, and she wished that she had never wanted to grow up.

Her biomom had vanished off the face of the planet and her dad’s family was all gone, so she went to her papa’s parent’s house, far away from her old hometown. Her grandparents were not happy to see her. Later, she would learn that her grandparents did not like her dad, not only because he was her dad, but because he was an “alcoholic” and also “turned our son away from God.”

Anne learned a lot of things from her grandparents.

One of those things was to be afraid of the dark.

Her room was a closet. That wasn't an exaggeration. Whenever she tried to sleep, she remembered the car and woke up in the middle of an asthma attack. 

At school she was teased for being skinny, for her clothes that hung off her frame, for the cane she had used ever since the accident (not even covering it in stickers shaped like planets stopped the torment), for her dads being in love, for one of her fathers being in prison, for her other father being dead, for her thick glasses… Anne didn’t keep track of the list. Her only solace was at the library, where Anne drank in information and kept it close as a shield around her heart. She went every day after school and stayed until she knew her grandfather would be making dinner. If she missed dinner, she’d be in trouble.

 

* * *

 

Anne was twelve years, one week, and four days old when she entered middle school and met her world history teacher.

Mr. Koudelka gave a funny little pause at her name during roll, but pronounced it right and smiled at her the way no teacher ever had— not pitying, more genuine. He sat on his desk and told all the kids to call him David, and they all thought he was really cool. The teasing and the bullying slowly stopped, but that was when her grandmother started throwing plates, so Anne tried to spend as much time as possible at the library.

World history was her last class of the day and Mr. Koudelka often asked her to stay back after just to chat about what they’d been doing in class that day. He complimented her cane and showed her the glasses he kept in the top drawer of his desk, which were even thicker than hers. If he noticed the bruises, he said nothing about it, at least not until the day she came in to class after a week of being absent with makeup carefully arranged to conceal a black eye.

 

* * *

 

She’d heard horror stories about foster care, but Mr. Koudelka seemed to sort out the paperwork quickly and suddenly Anne was living with her teacher, which wasn’t as weird as she’d thought it would be. He helped her with her homework, bought her special glasses which weren’t as thick as her old ones but were still strong enough that she could read with them on,and let her pick what she wanted for dinner most nights. He didn’t tell her she was too old for nightlights when she asked him for one, let her pile as many books as she wanted in his arms during their weekly library trips, and gave her space when she felt the walls closing in on her. Hepropped up her photograph of her and her dads next to the picture of him and his wife, who was away on a job, he told her. She didn’t ask him about his wife, and he didn’t ask her about her fathers.

They didn’t take vacations. Mr. Koudelka said that he had to be around all the time in case his wife contacted him, since she couldn’t provide him any notice and if he wasn’t around they’d miss messages from her. Sometimes he’d take her out for little weekend trips, out to the beach or into the city, but that was all. Only weekends. When she saw the door to the study closed, once every few months or so, she knew not to knock and disturb him.

 

* * *

 

The facts were these: Anne Eiffel was thirteen years, ten months, three weeks, and three days old when Mr. Koudelka knocked on her door and told her to pack up a bag quick, they were going away for a while.

Anne still didn’t like cars very much, but she had gotten over her fear of the dark, and Mr. Koudelka didn’t smell much like alcohol, so she climbed into the backseat of his rickety old sedan at four in the morning. Clutched in her hands were the two photographs from the mantle, the one of her and her fathers and the one of Mr. and Mrs. Koudelka.

Mrs. Koudelka, who Mr. Koudelka told Anne had kept her maiden name, had gotten herself into some kind of trouble on her job. When Anne told him he didn’t have to disguise the truth for her, since she was fourteen, Mr. Koudelka told her he didn’t know the facts himself, that Renée hadn't told him anything and if she did tell him anything he would be sure to tell Anne since, yes, she was fourteen and old enough to understand.

She had merely told him to get out of their house for a while just in case her bosses were watching and she’d get in touch as soon as she could.

Anne picked pamphlets out of racks in the welcome centers across every state line they crossed. They never stopped anywhere else, but she liked the pictures.

 

* * *

 

New York City was huge but not suffocatingly; every person’s eyes slid over the two of them as they walked hand in hand. Mr. Koudelka seemed to have a lot of friends everywhere, and they had a comfy two room apartment in the basement of a house in Brooklyn and bookshelves stacked with all the books Anne could read. She kept the photos she’d taken from the house in her backpack, which she kept on her back, just in case.

On her fifteenth birthday Mr. Koudelka surprised her with paperwork— forms for legal guardianship, already notarized, and forms to get a passport, which Anne was to fill out. Mr Koudelka took the photo himself, and when he showed it to her Anne suddenly remembered an old picture of her dad Papa had kept in his wallet, and she was struck by how similar she looked to him. At least, to her memory of him. It had been six years, five months, two weeks, and one day since she’d seen her dad last, and even longer since she’d seen her papa look at the photo of her dad in his wallet. But she was pretty sure she looked just like him.

 

* * *

 

From New York City they flew across the ocean to London and trekked across Europe. Planes were huge but not as scary as cars still were, and Anne spent half the time sleeping and the other half watching the clouds from above instead of below. 

Mr. Koudelka took what seemed to be a thousand pictures of the two of them at every castle, but his smile never seemed to reach his eyes, and he often shook awake in nightmares he wouldn’t tell her about. She only knew because she had trouble sleeping at night, lying awake for hours, counting sheep, reciting poems backwards and forwards to herself, with not a lick of sleep being found.

Sleep seemed to be an elusive thing. Anne tried to tell herself one of the stories her dad had told her when she was a child and found she couldn't remember a single one.

 

* * *

 

Anne was fifteen years, four months, one week, and six days old when Mr. Koudelka— her father, now, she’d been living with him for long enough— knocked on the bathroom door in their Berlin hotel room and asked her if she remembered her dad’s first name.

Then he played her the message his wife had sent him.

Anne listened to it over and over again— listened to Mr. Koudelka’s wife tell him about Officer Doug Eiffel, who she had finally confronted over some details in his personal file. He had finally broken down and told her about his daughter who he loved, who he missed, who he would do anything for— who their bosses had threatened and bribed him with to get him to go to space. 

Anne listened to this woman, who she had never met, who had never met her, beg her husband to find the little girl and keep her safe, keep her away from their bosses, until they could figure out a way to come home.

Anne asked if she could send a message back, and Mr. Koudelka mournfully shook his head. The messages only worked in one direction. She wouldn’t be able to tell her dad anything until he came home.

_If_ he came home.

That night Mr. Koudelka took her to a telescope a friend of his owned and pointed it off into the Leo constellation so she could see Wolf 359 for herself. It was a tiny star, dim and red, but now that she knew where it was she looked for it every night before she went to sleep, praying that her dad would be okay.

 

* * *

 

That December her father surprised her with something Anne hadn’t seen since she was six years, four months, and three days old— her dad’s menorah, a tarnished brass color with a dent in the shamash and blue wax caked into the lamps. She’d thought it was lost in the old house, taken away when she’d left to stay with her papa’s parents. She clutched it to her chest like a lifeline.

For the first time since she’d woken up in the hospital after the car accident, since the last time she’d seen her dad the night before the accident, as she spoke the words of the Hebrew prayers for the first night of Chanukah, she felt tears build up in her eyes, and choked on the last words of the final prayer. Her father wrapped her up in her arms as she cried, tears blurring her vision of the Chanukah candles she hadn’t been able to light in such a very, very long time.

 

* * *

 

On Anne Eiffel’s sixteenth birthday, in America once again, Mr. Koudelka woke her up and drove her to the airport, and held her hand as they stood at the arrivals gate. Airports were crowded and busy and Anne clung hard, leaning as heavily on her father as she was on her cane (the new one she’d gotten that didn’t have any planet stickers on it). She wasn’t ashamed of being sixteen and still nervous around large crowds. She was nervous of what her dad would say when he saw her again. The message she now knew by heart had made it sound like her dad still felt guilty about the car accident. Anne didn’t know if she forgave him for it or not, but she’d figure that part out later.

Mr. Koudelka looked over the crowd and his hand tightened in hers. The woman who pushed through the crowd right in front of them was far, far older than the smiling woman in the photograph still tucked in Anne’s backpack, but it was definitely her.

“David,” she whispered, and Mr. Koudelka let go of Anne’s hand to wrap his arms around his wife and hold on tight. Anne clutched her backpack and tried to breathe the way she’d always been taught. In four, out three. In four, out three.

When the two of them separated, Renée spoke in French to her husband before looking over and realizing Anne was standing there. “Who—,” she said, and then her eyes went round as dinner plates as she took in Anne’s hair and nose, which meant that she looked just like her dad. “ _David._  Is this—,”

There was a clatter of something dropping and Anne turned around. Across the airport, standing there— well, his hair was shorter than she remembered, and greyer than it was probably supposed to be, and he was far skinnier than she remembered, and his eyes had lost the sparkle she’d remembered always seeing in them, but they had the exact same nose, and he was looking at her like he’d seen a ghost, so that was definitely her dad, and Anne found that she couldn’t breathe.

“Annie?” he said, or rasped, or something, she couldn’t tell, maybe he hadn’t spoken at all, but in that moment Anne found she didn’t care. In that moment, it didn’t matter that she had a cane and glasses and lingering breathing problems. It didn’t matter that her dad had gotten drunk and driven the car into a tree and gone to prison and then to space. It didn’t matter that she still wasn’t sure that she could ever forgive him.

The facts were these. He was her dad, and she had spent eight years, seven months, and two weeks away from him, and she had spent the last seven months, two weeks, and three days wishing and hoping and praying that he would make it back to her so she could tell him she loved him, even if it was only one more time, even if he left again to live his life and leave her with Mr. Koudelka and his wife.

And then her dad was limping across the floor as fast as his legs could carry him and he looked weak and unsteady but the arms that wrapped around her shoulders were sure and strong, and Anne dropped her cane so she could clutch the sweater hanging off her dad’s frame as tightly as possible. His body shook, a silent sob he clearly was trying to hold in.

“I’m so sorry, princess,” he whispered to her. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, dad,” she told him.

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

He pulled back to look at her, eyes bright. “I know I’m not much of a birthday present,” he said. “And I only brought back a glitchy AI from the station. The rest of it was kind of falling apart.”

“I think you’re a great birthday present,” Anne told him.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Mr. Koudelka grinned at his wife. “I took her in a few years ago,” he told her. “Surprise! You’re kind of a mom?”

“With everything that’s happened to us in the last few years?” Renée said. “I think I can handle this part.”

 

* * *

 

There were still legalities to sort out. There was still Goddard Futuristics to dismantle, and nightmares to soothe, and countless sleepless nights to blink through, and Anne still hadn’t decided if she forgave her dad. But she told him she’d waited for him to watch the newest Star Wars movies and he’d spit water across the kitchen table, and there was a third photo between the two old ones on the mantle, of Anne and her dad and Mr. Koudelka and Renée, and Hera was kind of a cool computer who ran the whole house. 

So this wasn't really any kind of ending. 

After all, all endings are really just the beginnings of other stories.

**Author's Note:**

> again I say, what is time.
> 
> I'm not going to pretend these are my set-in-stone headcanons, I'm really enjoying watching everyone speculate on tumblr. And I don't even think half of this is possible? But I had this idea and it ran away from me and this is how I would like things to happen. Hey, the verse has FTL travel, maybe this is possible?
> 
> it's not going to happen this way lmao
> 
> In case you were wondering, the thought of Eiffel never coming home from space never crossed my mind once.
> 
> I made Anne a Leo for ultimate sads. To Anne, dad is Doug, papa is Doug's longterm partner. biomom loves Anne very much but left in Anne's best interest. Anne probably tries to find her when she gets older. 
> 
> And, yep, sticking with a Jewish Doug headcanon. Why not.
> 
> [Come chat with me on Tumblr.](http://citadelofswords.tumblr.com/ask)


End file.
